


Father, night and drink

by Terry_the_warrior



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 10:16:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18618598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terry_the_warrior/pseuds/Terry_the_warrior
Summary: “I’ve been thinking for such a long time, but still cannot tell what Mula is to me: father, or something else.”





	Father, night and drink

**Author's Note:**

> 《父亲，以及夜和酒》的翻译，还是谢谢笛老师，我永远爱笛老师555

　　My sister used to talk a lot to me about father—of course, my natural father—that he was a very gentle man. She said that when he left, she was only ten years old. At that time, I was near my first birthday, which means mother could go to work again. So father left with his bow and fishing rod, leaving us with his not-very-much savings.

　　She didn’t blame him. I mean, what was about him to blame for? Keepers of the Moon are born like that. Men have no control nor responsibility over family issue, and it was not very common for him to stay beside my mother until my birth as one of our clan. “Sorry, can’t do that. My little girl is waiting for me to take her home.” Sister once showed me that how father would answer when other adventurers invite him to travel. He would say like that, then hold her up by her waist, or let her sit on his shoulders. “Sometimes he brushed my face with his tail. My sister added. She always looked excited whenever this topic was brought up, her eyes shining and her ears bouncing slightly.

　　But I could hardly think in the way she was thinking. Father was just a blur in my mind, and the gentleness my sister talked about didn’t make any sense with me who hadn’t even been born at that time. Thus when mother got hurt and sister tried every way she could to earn a little money to cure her…The truth was, I hated him. I couldnt help but thinking if he hadn’t left, our life would have been better than what we had.

　　Though I still dreamed of him. His face was kind of covered in white light, which made me rouse from sleep as if I were escaping from a nightmare. There was one night that when I opened my eyes to meet the moonlight coming through the window, my sister sat besides the bed holding my hand, her body covered in the dance dress that I hated so much. She dropped her eyes on me and asked, “Kummy, did you dream of Dad? I didnt even know what she was asking, so I just drew my hand out of her, turned around to catch my sleep. The next morning I thought of this, I knew I must have said something during my dream.

　　Even now, he doesn’t stop appearing in my dream. To some degree, it is even more frequent, but I still can’t see his face clearly. Perhaps I still call him in my dream. This kind of thing actually happened; when I woke up in the morning-- before Mula set another bed for me, I slept on his bed, and he left a large space between us so he could only barely hold on the edge of the bed-- a complex expression made his face unreadable. Without a word, he looked at me for a very long time, and I could only see his tail swinging in the air when he left to clean himself.

　　I heard his somniloquy and his tossing around several times, enough for me to tell that ,he was a light sleeper.He must have heard something from me. I guess at the first days he might have never actually fall in sleep, which made it natural for him to hear what I murmured in my dreams. Later, it was my turn to be pulled out of sleep to find that he got up to wash his face. The darkness of night never shadowed my sight, I could still recognize the knackered and frightened look on his face, which held much more exhaustion than in daytime.

　　**

　　Mula…No matter what, I owe him.

　　He saved my life, cured my illness, gave me food to eat. He even let me live at his place and taught me how to earn a little money with blade. I thought this was what a father might be…except those hugs and kisses that my sister mentioned to me. But he never asked me to call him dad. “A’mula Tia.” He said, and told me to “call him by whatever I like”.

　　Unlike my mother, he spent almost all his money gambling or getting drunk. Sometimes he slept out, but more often he staggered home with a bottle in his hand. If he didnt go out for fun, I could always find him curling up in the sofa when I got home, his eyes hiding behind his arm to escape the light. At such time, he would be awake, but wouldn’t move even a finger. Only when I mindlessly pulled my wound and hissed, would he jumped up to get the medicine and bandage from bedside, forcing me to stop whatever I was doing and packing me up. There were also several times that he took me to the tavern with him, but he never allowed me to drink. “Hold on, this is not something you can drink.” He held his bottle in one hand and gave me a glass of orange juice with another hand to bundle me off. “Uh…Don’t run too far, don’t touch alcohol. I’m watching you.” It was not until that day that I actually knew how much he could drink. Almost two whole bottles could only bring some blood color on his cheeks and make him chirk. It felt like he was drinking water, which made me confused how a toper like him would get so drunk that couldn’t even walk properly.

　　***

　　However, not before long, he was besotted for once. He was so dead-drunk that even knocking the door would be too hard for him. He might sleep outside of the door for a whole night if I didn’t go out to collect our clothes back. There was a bottle in his hand when I found him. An unusual red color appeared on his fingertips, he was gripping so hard that I couldn’t get the bottle out of his hand.

　　    “Wake up.” I shook him. He gave me a blurred look and tried to stand on his own, yet he failed as he was wobbling on his feet. He seemed so upset about it; only then did he lay his hand on my shoulder and held the wall on the other side.

　　I helped him through the door. He weighted down on me, entirely giving away the control of his limbs. It took all my strength to carry him over my shoulder. The arm he set across my back felt like the bag of stones used to lift the iron gate. The road downstairs became excessively more extended with him leaning on me. I barely kept my balance and fell around the corner, bringing both of us into the wall. The bottle he was grasping shattered in pieces and the residual liquor splashed all over the floor.

　　I guessed it would not have been harder if he was just lame. I threw him into the bed and tried to get rid of his jacket. It was so wringing-wet and dripping with the stink of alcohol , which made me think that I should leave it in the dirt and take it to the laundry tomorrow.

　　Yet he pulled back halfway through I was undressing him.

　　He abruptly broke loose of my grip with an outburst of brute force, holding me up and dragging me to bed. I was hanging with my feet twistedly touching the ground, trapped by the half unleashed clothing, suffering. I had no choice but tried to calm him down, patting his back, fumbling into the warm wetness spilling in his side. It was thick and fevering, crusting the fabrics together. It was obviously blood. I panicked and started to scrabble, attempting to find him some healing agent. He clasped even harder that oppressed my breath...I had to allow him, while gently assuring him that I was by his side and that I should not leave him alone.

　　There he let go of me. Before I had been drawn to bed without taking my boots off, and I could only lie flat at the side. He uttered a sigh like a stray cat. The ferocity of his power was lost. He pulled me softly, seemingly to suggest that I could lie beside him. I was frightened by him, worrying that he might struggle more and tear up the wounds, so I crept into his arms, pressing firmly. Effective move. He quieted down, cuddling my shoulder with one arm and rubbing my ear with his cheek. The wind of his gasp breezed through my hair. After some time, his hand slowly loosened up, and his breath grew long and steady. I realized that he finally fell asleep.

　　I felt strange. It was Mula who held me tightly in his warming arms, but it was me comforting him. In a sudden, Mula seemed like he was younger than me and that he needed to be taken care of.

　　And yes, I had the willingness to take care of mom as well...yet it was different. I wished to help my sister, taking the burden off from them, but I never came to ask “why?” I rarely thought about the past or the future, but Mula puzzled me. He never explained anything, and it began to intrigue me.

　　It was odd. Perhaps Mula was not the same as the other father-figures...But what would he be if he was not merely a father to me.　

　　The truth underneath was not revealing itself. Agitated by the alcohol smell, I could not sleep. Mula had fallen into exhausted slumber and had not moved since. I got the chance to release myself from his arms and dared to examine his injury. The scabs were growing with the blood. I had to use a knife to cut open his jacket with underwears then wiped the blood clusters off. Luckily, though the wound was not very shallow, it was a smooth cut. There would be no more blood. I went back to bed, finally relaxed in ease.

　　

　　Mula was comatose through the night. Although he kept turning over in distress, he did not wake up. I had woken up constantly. Things blurred between broken dreams and reality, with timelines mixing up. Mula was there, in my home, in my delusions, as he was meant to be there. He embraced me, and my sister too. This crazy dream was disrupted by the rapid knocking on the door. I ran upstairs to open the door. It was that friend of Mula stood there with dark circles under the eyes and a medical kit in his hand. I remembered him. He was the one that treated me.

　　

　　He asked me to show him the way and saw Mula wriggling under the bed sheet.He snorted, grumbling I knew it, throwing the medical kit at me, rolling up sleeves and starting working on the healing process with a wand. He took a look at Mulas wound, then he gave me a glance. Later he began to cast spells. I did not understand, but I could see water drops condensing under his palms to wash the remaining filth off the skin. He talked to me when he was taking Mulas clothes off to search for other injuries. His eyes were steady. He said that Mula was having a fight with some guys last night and almost killed them. One of them got whacked in the head, and it was near death. He was woken up in the midnight to treat the wounded and not until dawn did he think of the perpetrator, Mula, so he stopped by to take a look. As he expected, Mula was injured too. He kept on whining, for a moment he was complaining that Mula had to pay for his job, for the next minute he reminded me of making Mula some digestive substance and that Mula already had a fever. Then he mentioned the guy whose head got whacked open. He talked about all the things. It seemed like he could not stop. Yet when I asked him about the reason why Mula involved in a fight, he shut up and paused all things at hand. Then he looked at me frowning. How should I know? He asked.

　　

　　It could not stop me. I was about to question further when Mula opened his eyes. He strained his voice and laughed: Because they are cowards. He was rolled eyes by the doctor and pressed on beside the wounds. He let out a shout in pain and stayed silent after.

　　

　　I could see that the doctor already knew things,but he refused to tell me. Same with Mula. Later when I asked him about the accident, he just equivocated, saying that he was “pissed off,” and that he wanted them “to be educated.

　　

　　I was curious about what happened that night in an extended period, but there was no way that I could acquire that knowledge. Mula was not willing to explain as before, and it was merely a small piece of all the mysteries that I had no way to acquire the truth. Eventually, I lost the interest in this event, and Mula had not let what happened that night repeat itself, no matter how drunk he got.

　　


End file.
